If I was a passionate Redskins backer—and I am—I’d be watching this game very carefully. Because if there was ever a week for the Skins to begin a reversal of fortunes it’s now.

This week’s home game is a rematch with our divisional foes from New York, so there’s an opportunity for comparison. When these two teams last met, the Giants won by virtue of seven Redskins turnovers—the most takeaways for New York in a non-strike season since 1986. Still, despite the Redskins unintended generosity, the Giants only won 20-14, and Coach Gibbs lacked the timeout necessary to challenge the seventh turnover—a Clinton Portis fumble that would have likely been reversed on review.

The Giants used that win as a rallying point—silencing critics of Tom Coughlin who had made him out to be an unlikeable jerk and racing to a 5-2 record. Since then, however, the Giants and Redskins have been leading parallel lives-—a moribund offense, a quarterback change, and oddly similar contests against division leading Philadelphia in consecutive weeks. Now Gibbs, after stapling Clinton Portis to the bench during last week’s close loss to Pittsburgh, finds himself facing the same kind of heat Coughlin received at the season’s outset, as the sports scribes wonder if the game has passed Gibbs by.

(AP Photo of Joe Gibbs from NFL.com)